TG Erotica and the writing life.

Announcing Book Three of the Planetary Union series: Shrapnel, now available on Amazon and Smashwords.

Those who know me in real life know that I’m a fan of this one series that has to do with trekking through the stars. To me, it’s always been about hope and exploration, with an emphasis on wide-eyed wonder in spite of the worst that the universe can throw. It’s also about a sexy crew that’s part of a wide, sprawling organizations…why on earth WOULDN’T they have something like the Recreation-Class ships?

Anyway, the PlanetaryUnion books are a pure joy for me to write because I get to visit my own universe that’s a little like that one. My goal is to write sci-fi that also happens to include sex, preferably as a natural outgrowth of the situations faced by a multi-species crew that’s there to help others blow off steam in the most enjoyable ways possible.

…not that I’m concentrating entirely on the Union. I’m currently editing another Aegis story (not popular, but again…I love them). It ended up being a combination story: focus on Venus and his/her relationship with his/her new girlfriend Dynamiss, and a knock-down drag-out brawl between a team of super villains and the heroes of Aegis. I also have another Gender-Switch/Breast-Expansion bit of fluff planned. That’s what I’m writing next.

Finally, I’m still at work editing my urban fantasy serial. It’s seven parts long, each of which is about 45 pages. So out of that 315 pages, I’ve gotten through about 120 of them in the first sweep. It’s intimidating as hell, because I’ve never tried editing anything of this scope before. Thank heavens for Stephen King’s book On Writing; it has rather a good, simple set of signposts for a writer who’s going to edit his or her books. If you’re a writer and you haven’t read that yet…God, WHY?

Checking my work:

Finished editing book three of Planetary Union. Started work on the GS/BE story tentatively titled “Jiggle Physics.” Hard at work editing my urban fantasy. Partridge. Pear tree.

Like this:

SO the resolutions were to write every day, post here once a week, and get some stories out. The first one went…well, I’ll say about 90% well. The second one went GREAT, as fans of this blog can attest. Stories got out.

Why haven’t I been posting? At first it was life. I had a lot of things going on, things being planned, things happening and throwing me off-balance. When life stabilized, it was inertia. I’m afraid that I’m quite prone to not doing things if they’re not right in front of me, and I’m horrible about procrastinating. Wonderful traits for someone who wants to be in the public eye, hmm? Yet there we have it. Still, new year, so it’s a good time to get back on the horse with this blog and Twitter both.

That’s the secret, by the way. Just because you haven’t done something for a while, it feels like you can’t anymore. That’s bullshit. You just do it. Writing in particular, by the by. Exercising too, though you need to build back up to your previous levels and consult a doctor. >.>

No reason.

Writing levels for the year! The initial goal was Between 1000-3000 a day, preferably closer to the 3000 mark. This would have left me with 365,000-1,095,000 words at the end of the year. Let’s see how Max did!

January: 45112. Average 1455/day.

February: 37121. 1326/day.

March: 63649. 2053/day.

April: 51,105. 1704/day.

May: 52,101. 1681/day.

June: 25,165. 839/day.

July: 23,910. 771/day.

Aug: 36,044. 1163/day.

Sep: 43,640. 1455/day.

Oct: 27,750. 895/day.

Nov: 60,052. 2002/day.

Dec: 34,170. 1102/day.

Total for the year: 500,819. That’s 1372 words/day on average. So that’s on the low end of the goal, and the only place to go is up!

A few notes: Yay for NaNoWriMo. My goal was actually higher than this, but I did my 50,000 words for the competition and another 10k for a side story, so I’m gonna call it a win*.

*: In all honesty, I didn’t actually finish. I wrote the final TWO parts of a seven-part series, each of them around 25k, to finish the 50k for the month. Since it’s a competition against myself more than anyone else, I consider it a solid win. The seven-part series is an urban fantasy which will be published under my real name. I’m excited and scared about it at the same time.

December’s count fell off thanks to a major ice storm that came through and knocked out our power for about a week. That power included our heat, so we basically spent a few days huddling under blankets with increasingly annoyed cats. They were not good writing conditions.

Okay, speaking of good writing conditions…it appears that Amazon is up to its old book-hiding tricks again. People have a hard time finding my stories unless looking specifically for them, which sorta cuts into my sales. This is why I’m branching out into NON-smut like my urban fantasy. I’m also experimenting with things like sci-fi that also includes sex under Maxwell Avoi, like my Planetary Union series.

I’ve put out a lot of stories, and my income is far below what it was when I half the stories up. I’m aware that part of that might be because I seemed to have abandoned this blog and my Twitter, and that’s totally on me. There are also new people joining me in the niche that is gender-swap fiction, which is awesome. Welcome! The professional part of me growls a little, since it scatters the money, but again that’s more my fault than anyone’s. I want to be clear: I’m very glad to have others here with me. Welcome again, and I look forward to writing next to you.

Currently editing: Book 3 of Planetary Union, followed by another Aegis story. I’m also plowing through the 300+ pages of my urban fantasy, which actually is a lot better than I remember it being. It’s good enough that I not only don’t hate it, I catch myself laughing from time to time.

Currently writing: The last book in the Staying In Vegas series. Things get weird.

Thanks for sticking with me, those who have. To those finding this blog for the first time, hi! I’m Max. I like big boobs and gender swapping fiction. I plan to be better about posting. See you soon!

Like this:

The second of my three New Year’s resolutions was to post more regularly in this blog. Once a week, I think the song went, and on Mondays.

Yes. Well. How are your resolutions going?

Anyway! Outside of that one I’m doing pretty well. I have kept a consistent word count of at least 1000 a day, which is a minor miracle for me. Yesterday I did 700 and then was called away from the keyboard for several hours, and I got jittery. I’ve actually been doing over 3000 a day pretty often this month.

But this post is about my work in February! Since there were 28 days in the month, I had a goal of 84,000 words with a minimum of 28,000. I did 37,121, which is slightly above the minimum and well below NaNoWriMo levels. Still, went pretty well. During February I published The Valentine War and Rachel’s Expansion, plus another one under a different pen name. So I hit the minimum there, too.

Sales were down. They’ve been down for a while. I suspect it has something to do with me posting stuff under the other pen name, along with posting either seasonal or non-TG stories. Rachel’s Expansion was an experiment, actually…a friend of mine suggested doing an inflation story, and since I like that fetish as well I agreed. It’s selling okay, but since it’s not a TG story I suspect it’s having a hard time finding traction under the Avoi name. The Valentine War is seasonal, of course, which doesn’t necessarily kill a story but makes it a little harder to sell outside of the season in question. Also, it’s done for laughs, which seems to offend some people. Apparently TG fucking is a srs bzns for some. Ah well, can’t win ’em all.

Just published Temporary Heroine, one of my longer stories, so I’m on track for this month (after publishing book 2 in the Staying in Vegas series, Raising the Stakes). My longer stories seem to sell better; Breeder is one of my best sellers and certainly my best-reviewed. More bang(ing) for the buck, I suppose. Fine with me! I like the long stories.

Checking my work: Currently writing a reality-show-based TG story. I have something like six more ready to edit thanks to recent prolifity. I’m also editing a young-adult urban fantasy and writing a more grown-up urban fantasy along the way. Next story up will probably be either a spooky one about a hitchhiker or a more light-hearted one about (wait for it) quantum nanites. Because mad science is fun!

I wanted to direct everyone’s attention to Carl’s Adult Books, a new site created and maintained by Carl East. Carl has been an erotica writer since the Bronze Age, and he’s created this site to promote both his and other writers’ books. He was nice enough to invite me to the site and now I can help repay that by spreading the word!

Go! Grab some erotica!

At least count, besides me and Carl, there were 14 other authors on there, each with around a dozen books listed and most with many more available. Now I’m gonna go write some more suggestive material about the Bronze Age. Cheers!

So the time comes to see how well things have gone as far as New Year’s Resolutions. Have you kept yours? Actually, I seem to be doing pretty well.

1. Write 1000-3000 words a day, and don’t beat myself up if I don’t hit 3000. Here’s a fun fact: at no time this month did I hit 3000 words in one day. However, I managed to hit at least 1000 a day, and I came in at 45112. Not bad for one month. So, good enough for me.

2. Post regularly in this here blog. Um. Yeah. I said I did “pretty well,” not that I was perfect.

3. Post at least two stories a month. On the surface it looks like fail city, but the fact is that I posted one Avoi story and one story under a different, new pen name. So far that new story has sold precisely nothing. I don’t mean, “Oh, it sold a couple copies but not nearly as well as my established pen name.” I mean dick. However, I did put up two stories, so I’m calling it good.

So that went well. Now the question is whether I can keep it going! Well, we all know that I can, the question is whether I will. I have other, non-writing resolutions like “exercise four times a week” that are already showing dividends, so it’s easy to hit 1000 words before eight, eight-thirty and then sort of fuck around the rest of the day.

I should have made a non-around-fucking resolution. That thing would have been in shambles by the end of the first week, though, let’s not kid ourselves.

Checking my work:

Finished story two in my anonymous short story series. It’s different; it’s not like anything I usually write, not least of which is because men stay men and there’s no magic or mad science. I know, screw that, right? But it’s been fun enough to make part of my writing habits. I’ll probably keep gouging away, as Spider Jerusalem tells us.

Finished my Valentine story for the year. It’s a light-hearted thing about four gods and goddesses of love who get into a war in the middle of a mall, with humans as their pawns. Unlike the previously-mentioned story, men become women in this one. YOU’VE BEEN WARNED.

Finished a 30,000-word story about some costume-contest entrants who get in over their heads, so that one’s in an editing bay on my computer. Similarly, story two in the “Staying in Vegas” series is awaiting its own wash and wax. Another story, the one I wrote under my real, actual name during NaNoWriMo, is currently in the unkind grip of Scrivener.

As far as Avoi stories, I’m currently writing a darker one, a take on a ghost story.

I’m reading this nice little ebook by Rachel Aaron called 2k to 10k, which is all about upping your daily word output. Great book on the subject, by the way. I mean come on, seriously good writing advice for $0.99? It’s a win all the way ’round, folks. Go buy it.

Toward the end, she puts up a few pieces of advice, and she says that she gets the question, “What advice do you have for first-time writers” quite a bit. Then she says something that I wish I could frikkin’ skywrite.

“THERE ARE NO WRITING POLICE.” Or, as she puts it a few paragraphs later, “If you have a book that you want to write, just write the damn thing.”

Don’t worry about trends. Don’t ever…EVER listen to someone who says that something “shouldn’t” be in a book, or that a story won’t sell, or that it “can’t” be about something. These are the naysayings of small-minded, scared people who can’t tell their own stories. Write YOUR story. It does not matter a DAMN bit if I’d like it or not; if you like it, it’s your piece of art, and others will pick up on your passion.

Well, here we are at the end of 2012. I don’t know about you guys, but my adherence to my New Year’s resolutions was spotty at best. Ideally, since this was a leap year (surprisingly important when it comes to certain things), I should have written around 628,000 words. I wrote…rather less than that. However, I did pretty well overall. I just didn’t keep up with my personal goals.

Goals. Psh. Psh, I say.

We lost dad this year. That was a hard time. It still is. I’m sort of dreading the first half of the year, to be honest. We’re going to head out to California for the memorial service (mom insists on calling it a Celebration of Life service…you can hear the capitals when she talks about it) sometime in April. We’re going by train to a place I haven’t seen in…geez, around fifteen years. Last time I was there I was such a different person. Anyway, we miss dad and welcome the opportunity to lay his ashes to rest in the family plot out there.

In theory I have an invitation from a friend of mine to join her in Nawlins for Mardi Gras, but I don’t think I’m going to have the money to do that this time. I might try to scrape up the cash, who knows? Sales are…volatile, mostly ’cause I haven’t been posting stories as often as I should.

Which brings us to the New Years Resolutions portion of our show! I learned last year that Things Happen, so I’m going to make them a little looser than before.

1a. Write 3000/day.1b. Write a minimum of 1000/day.1c. Don’t beat myself up if I can’t do that.

2. Post in the frikkin’ blog, Max. For a while I was posting once a week on Mondays. I’d like to get back to that.

3. At least two stories a month. At. Least.

There. Poof.

Checking my work:

Still editing a couple of stories left over from NaNoWriMo, including the second in the “Staying in Vegas” trilogy. It’s pretty damn weird, y’all. Also editing the main story that I wrote for NaNo, a young-adult fantasy involving a smart heroine and some pixies. I’m using Scrivener for that, for the first time, so it’s an interesting experience.

Currently writing: another magical gender-change story, complete with escalations, cosplay, and other stuff. I’m also trying my hand at a bit more realistic fiction that will probably go under another name if it’s published at all. It’s present-tense and not like anything I’ve written before. We’ll see how it goes.

Have a wonderful 2013, guys. Treat other people as well as you can; you never know what they’re going through.